Significance of the Study
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cognitive knowledge includes the vocabulary mastery, linguistic and discourse knowledge. They also should be motivated in reading.
While they are reading, there are changes in the ability and cognitive knowledge they have. The students might increase their knowledge by reading.
However, their motivation can also change. It depends on their success in reading. The changes of ability and knowledge in reading can also be affected by the
instructions that the teacher gives to the students. Thus, relevant instructions will promote the students’ reading comprehension.
b. The Text
Texts may give great contribution to the students’ reading comprehension. Those can be categorizeed as easy or difficult ones. Texts which are easy are those
that suit to the background knowledge of the readers, the students. It means that when the students can relate between what is being informed in the text and what
has been there in their prior knowledge, the texts are easy. If it happens, the students’ reading comprehension is achieved. In contrast, if the students cannot
connect the information from the text to their background knowledge, the texts can be said as difficult texts because comprehension is not attained.
c. The Topic
The topic of the text also influences the students’ reading comprehension.
When the students are given a text with uninteresting topic, they may find it difficult to understand although the text was categorized as easy. They even seem
unwilling to read the text. On the other hand, the students can understand the text
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well when they are given a text which is interested and relevant to them Snow, 2002: 26.
d. The Activity
The activity on reading is closely related to the purpose of the reading. Different aims of reading have different activities. In this study, the activity on
reading is aimed at ach ieving the students’ reading comprehension on texts. To
achieve the students’ reading comprehension, the activities entail the process of finding the main idea, finding detail information, guessing meaning of difficult
words from the context, and creating meaning to the whole text.